This is What REALLY Happened
by Clouds On the Brain
Summary: Nintendo loves mystery. For instance, the mystery of Grog's disappearance in the Lost Woods. Did he really turn into a Stalfos? Is Fado REALLY that creepy? And where was the Skull Kid during all of this, anyway? It was then that a fanfiction writer with nothing better to do wrote her own truth, feeling that Grog deserved a better fate, and the Skull Kid needs to be in more stories.


**Because I needed to convince myself that Fado wasn't really that creepy, and Grog didn't turn into a monster. ****Poor man. I think he really was a "nice guy" like he claimed to be. ****He can't help it that he doesn't look much like a normal Hylian... **

**While playing OoT, I couldn't help but wonder what the Skull Kid (the one you sell the skull mask to) was doing, during the Biggoron's sword trading quest. He was missing from his usual place... and so, this happened. Enjoy...?**

First of all, let me just say that I didn't mean to kill him.

I'd made it clear to the other Skull Kids and to all the Deku Scrubs that this part of the Lost Woods was _my _territory. Sure, us Skull Kids are all about fun and games, but we have turf we like to protect all the same. I'm the only monster who's allowed to be here. Then, this guy comes along, and sits right down next to _my_ tree stump! Who _does _that?

What? Okay, killing someone over something like that might seem like a bad thing, but you don't know the whole story yet. So, shut your mouth!

He was an adult. Skull Kids fear adults, as you surely know. All of us attack adults on sight until they leave, and they usually get the message. This guy, though—I just keep shooting at him with my flute, and he doesn't even react_. _Freaky, right? He couldn't be normal.

The guy couldn't have just been an innocent victim, either. I mean, if you'd just look at him, you'd see what I mean. His face was disgusting, his eyes had no pupils or irises, his skin was sickly white—and, in my defense, he looked like a Stalfos from where I was standing. I could practically see his bones through his skin. What was I supposed to do? Adult Stalfos are a Skull Kid's worst nightmare!

So, I kept shooting at him. The poison needles didn't seem to be affecting him, and he just sat there, unfazed. Furious, I retreated to go talk to Saria, who always knows what to do about outsiders.

"Ignore him," she says, "and eventually he'll leave. He's probably just a lost traveler who's looking for a place to rest. Give it a few hours."

Well, I tried that. I couldn't just let that guy prance around in my section of the Woods unattended, though, so I watched from afar. I saw him rifling through my mushroom collection at one point. That was just messed up—what kind of guy goes through another guy's mushroom collection?—but I let it slide. He seemed to find what he was looking for, which was a mushroom I had more than one of, so I decided not to throttle him then and there.

He sat back down at my stump. Later, I saw another adult come by and pull out some freaky blue cuccoo, and then he took my mushroom and left with it. Then the first guy is all alone again.

I figure that was when my poison needles actually started to take effect, because he suddenly cried out and collapsed. Now that I think about it, I _did _end up sticking quite a few needles into him…

Uh-oh.

So, he's dead. I tried everything from CPR to sucking out the poison and Farore knows whatever else, but nothing worked. He was good and dead, and there was nothing else to say about it.

That's when I got an idea.

Finding a large shield and a sword took some work, since I couldn't leave the forest, but I managed to acquire both when I asked one of my buddies, who knows a guy. I tied the shield and sword to the weirdo-man's body, and when I stood him up (the little mini-forest spirits swirling all around the place did it for me) he looked just like a Stalfos… minus the skin, but you wouldn't notice that if you didn't look too hard. So stop looking so hard. I'm talking to you, reader! Quit it!

I planned to walk him over to the little cliff nearby, then make him fall off so it'd look like a Stalfos was just being a brainless, undead idiot and ran off the edge instead of using the ladder. It seemed like a good plan. I was still a little guilty over killing the guy, but what was important at that moment was getting rid of the body and wiping my hands clean.

So, I had the little spirits puppeteer the body over to the entrance of another area of the Lost Woods, the one that had the cliff. We were almost through when, just my luck, a little Kokiri girl came in to my territory.

"Hey, Skull Kid, what are you doing?" she asked, looking at me and my puppet.

"Nothing." I said, on instinct.

"Then what's with that guy over there? Is he… a human?"

I had to think fast. I couldn't tell her the real story—the Great Deku Tree would kill me! Not that he could actually do anything by his own power, being a tree, but still, he had authority over a lot of the other forest creatures. I could be eaten alive if he commanded it. What was a good excuse? What would this girl believe?

Then I realized that it was Fado who had seen us. Gullible, Mido-hugging, Fado. I knew what to do.

"Oh, this guy? He _used _to be human. But he stayed in the woods too long… and became a Stalfos! I'm just shooing him out of here."

Fado giggled. "He became a Stalfos? That's what he gets for coming into the Lost Woods, I suppose. But why does he have skin still?"

Crap. I'd figured she wouldn't pay attention to that.

"He's still transforming." I said. "I can assure you, though, in a few moments he'll be 100% Stalfos. If I don't get rid of him now, it'll cause trouble later."

"Okay, then."

With a sigh of relief (to myself, of course) I led the body off the cliff before Fado could ask where I was going to take it. I decided to just duck out of there for a while, too. It'd be bad if somebody found the body and didn't believe the Stalfos ruse, and then found me nearby.

So, I left the scene. I'll deal with the guilt later.

**Several hours afterwards:**

Link gazed wearily at the strange poultice the potion lady had given him. Grog had asked him to take some odd mushroom to her, and she'd asked him to take the poultice she'd made with it back to him in return. He'd never seen such a strange color in a poultice, and when he sniffed it, he felt like passing out. It wasn't that the smell was bad; it just made him feel dizzy.

He came to the area of the Lost Woods where Grog had been sulking. Normally, he'd try to avoid the creepy-looking man, but being the nice person he was, he felt like he needed to help out the carpenter's son just this one time. Maybe the poultice was supposed to make him look normal.

"That guy isn't here anymore." said Fado, noticed Link's shock when he found her standing in Grog's place. "Except for the Kokiri, people who come into the forest end up lost. They all become Stalfos. That's why he's not here anymore. Only his saw is left. Hee hee."

She eyeballed Link. "Heh heh heh. Are you going to become one...too? Heh heh!"

Link backed away from her. Back when he was living in the Kokiri forest as a child, Fado had never been quite so… creepy. Wondering what he should do with the poultice now, he took it out of his pouch.

"That medicine is made of forest mushrooms. Give it back!" Fado demanded.

He obliged, and she gave him the poacher's saw Grog had left in return. He ran off to go trade it with the carpenter in Gerudo Valley.

**Meanwhile:**

Grog groaned. He tried to stand up.

"Ugh, where am I...?"

He looked around. For some reason, he had a sword and shield tied to his wrists. Also, his body really hurt, like he'd fallen from a high place or something. The last thing he could remember was feeling some searing pain shoot through his blood stream, knocking him out. He looked up.

"Oh, a bridge. Must be the exit."

He climbed up the wooden poles nearby and jumped, landing on the bridge.

"I don't think I really have a place here." he said. "Maybe I should just go to Termina, and grow out my hair...?"

Feeling that was his best option, he found the portal to Termina and jumped through it, hoping to raise cuccoos like his sister Anju did back home. He managed to develop a slightly less disguted-with-people attitude and found happiness (in some form) raising his cuccoo chicks.

**(Also) Meanwhile:**

The Skull Kid popped out of his hiding place. He asked Fado, "Did you get my mushroom?"

"Yeah," she replied, "but it's a sparkly medicine now."

He frowned. "Well, that'd be stupid to put in my collection. You keep it."

"Okay!" She giggled and smeared the poultice on her face, like it was face-paint. "Do I look pretty now?" she asked.

The Skull Kid shrugged. "Yeah, whatever. Just get out of here. I've had enough intruders today."

"Fine."

She went back to the Kokiri forest, still giggling, and wondering why the funny man in the Kokiri garb had run off so suddenly. He looked like he was scared. She'd just asked him if he was going to turn into a Stalfos; nothing wrong about that…

Oh well. She'd go ask Mido about it. Mido knew everything.

**End.**

**Review, por favor. While criticism is welcomed, flames will be deleted, and the flamers hunted down. And punished. By redeads. Hee hee...**


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